Cookie Notice

WE LOVE THE NATIONS OF EUROPE

However, this blog is a US service and this site uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and analyze traffic. Your IP address and user-agent are shared with Google along with performance and security metrics to ensure quality of service, generate usage statistics, and to detect and address abuse.

Monday, 22 October 2018

Conservative Leadership contest

Oh Dear. It looks like those 48 letters to Graham Brady, Chair of the '22, have already been written. But hang on, chaps, I'm not ready; I re-joined the party (after an absence of about 36 years) in mid August - which means I must wait until mid November to vote. I wonder if the qualifying date is the date the contest is announced, or the date the party membership actually votes? I think we should be told.

David Davis would do very nicely as the Leader to get us through Brexit. Council estate, grammar school, SAS TA, then business for two decades until Parliament. Keen supporter of civil liberty and a man of proven principles. If the rest of the party won't accept Boris, David, then. Which brings me on to my fantasy cabinet.

Gove as Chancellor. Chancellors don't need to be popular, just clever. Keep Hunt at Health, and Sajid at the Home Office. Move Liam Fox to the FCO and give International Trade to Penny Mordaunt. And a revival of the Prescott / Clegg role for Boris as Deputy Prime Minister.

Hammond of course must go, as must Gauke, Clark, and Lidington. Brandon Lewis can become Minister for Plastics without a cabinet seat, with a remit to find ways of stopping the bloody Chinese, Asians, Africans and Indians fom throwing all their waste into the great rivers.

And of course suitable postings must be found for our dedicated public servants Oliver Robbins and Sly Sedwill, neither of whom I think will wish to remain in Whitehall.

Agreeing 100% with your choice of cabinet, unfortunately I don't think we'll reach that stage, since even if the 48 letters have gone in, all the signs are that the MPs would not vote her out in the resulting vote of confidence.

Tactically it would make much more sense to keep the 48 letters as a sword of damocles over the useless woman keep keep her focussed on No Deal rather than further idiotic concessions or extensions.

The only extensions I want to see are in the neck length of certain civil servants who have done their utmost to betray their fellow citizens.

160 votes are needed. However the dozy and evil EU-owned bitch has wandered so far from the path of righteousness that even the dumbest among the Tory MPs ( apart from the 12 to 20 who are already committed Brides of EU Treason) now understands that she is writing their collective suicide note. Unless she is stopped. And that the dole queue under Corbyn will be their certain fate if they stand with her. Many may still be bluffing and bullshiting about their loyalty but loyalty is hardly what Tory MPs are famous for.

This is their last chance. Only a decent Brexit and May out will result in a Tory GE victory. Esp as Corbyn has gifted them his own and ZaNu's treason.

What we are dealing with in Theresa May is a dedicated liar and consummate schemer. Describing her actions as incompetence is wishfull thinking. Nor is this before-the-event conspiracy theory prediction, it is after-the-event detective work. The written evidence is there for all except the wilfully blind.

In today's Sun Mrs May states: "Am I bringing back control of your money, your borders and your laws? Am I protecting your jobs ... Am I protecting the integrity of the United Kingdom? Above all, am I delivering the Brexit that the people of this country so clearly voted for? I need to be able to answer “Yes” to every one of these questions."

Her own Chequers plan (which will be the basis for Brexit, unless she is toppled) quite clearly shows that every one of her statements is a lie. The problem is not just Mrs May - we know what she is - so much as the dupes who still support her. Every excuse to prolong her tenure - the time is never "right" - only cements Chequers more firmly in place.

I've read that 46 letters have been sent in, although I don't know how accurate that is. I suspect that this month (and possible this week) is when a number of 'held back' letters will be sent in, perhaps enough to make a clear statement.

If the number of letters is sufficient, and the rules are followed(!) then the leadership contest will take up to 3 months - unless there is only one candidate. I imagine that the rEU will not fancy agreeing anything until the next Prime Minister is appointed or reappointed. All of which makes a clean Brexit more likely. Which may be a factor in the timing for some.

David Davis?????!!!!!We were warned when he was appointed that he was, shall we say, " laid back"It is a British tradition to hide fierce competence behind a facade of languid amateurism but with Davis you only get the amateurism.In December 2017, he revealed his hidden shallows concerning his duties " I don't have to be very clever. I don't have to know very much".So high marks for typical British modesty!

In January 2018 he displayed the height, length and breadth of his ignorance, complaining that the EU was making us into a " third country" which was exactly the status to which Mrs May had aspired in her Lancaster House speech of a year before. He was also whingeing that British quality certifications ( for everything from aero engines to pharmaceuticals) would cease to have EU validity from Brexit day - something which the civil servants must have told Mrs May and DExEU before she made her policy decisions.Incidentally Mrs May told a serious terrminological inexactitude in her video address to the nation - that the EEA/EFTA countries had to be in the customs union - which is definitely untrue and, so far, I have not heard any MP demanding a retraction and apology. Mrs May and Davis appear to have acted on this untruth from the start and no MP was sufficiently informed to refute them. So when a ( relatively junior) minister asked my preference for PM, I could only reply " none of the above" . I was given the names of a couple of dark horses who are thought to be "coming men" so will watch their progress with interest.

The present system of party selection was put in place after Iain Duncan Smith was elected leader by ordinary party members but with only minority support from MPs. To make sure that could never happen again, they put Ken Clarke in charge of what was quaintly termed " party democracy". So the chance of being offered a choice between two duds is pretty high.

For Mrs. May to be replaced it is not sufficient to "send in the 48 letters" as this simply ensures a leadership contest takes place.

At the moment I would expect Mrs. May to win just as Mr. Major did and then there could not be another contest for a year.

In order to get to the 159 or so votes needed to defeat Mrs. May it will be necessary for the Conservative MPs to be fearing for their seats and hence plum jobs at the next GE (which is all the majority of MPs care about really).

So I can see why those relatively few Conservative MPs who believe in democracy need to wait until either the right conditions arise or there is simply no other option when Mrs. May finally declares her plan to betray the referendum result.

This is all going nowhere. May is just playing out the clock, the rebels don't have the numbers, they know it, she knows it, and the Tory MPs are mostly Remainers who are trusting that despite a Brexit betrayal they'll still get more votes than Corbyn.

John Brown, Even if Theresa May wins, the very fact of a leadership contest will put a dent in her tin bath. What else can be done? We were given the deals to choose from - Remain or Leave - we chose Leave under the conditions enacted by Parliament.

Now Parliament is just ignoring us, and constructing its own new deal. It is as though we were back in 2015 and Cameron had been told by his Cabinet that his then deal wasn't good enough, and to go back to the EU and get a better one. Good-bye Referendum; good-bye democracy.

If Mrs May had been challenged in the aftermath of her 2017 election defeat history would have been different. It is not too late to make the attempt even now.